Amazon should be the training grounds for union organizing. All unions should send apprentices and shop stewards to do a week on the streets to help unionize Amazon. This could be the training grounds of what works and what doesn’t. The experience the young union people will help build our unions larger and better, and we will be training new leaders.
The unions all need to come together as one to win this fight to put a union in one of the largest and richest companies in the world. There are playbooks out there, such as the one about Debs and the Pullman Railroad Strike. The Ford Motor Company employees’ sit-in strike.
The big people and corporations have been brought down before. We must all band together like we did in the 1950s with the AFL/CIO, the two largest unions combined as one with one leader.
A thorough investigation into the failure of the union attempt at Amazon in Alabama needs to be done before we continue. We can’t just blame the workers and community. We need to understand the why’s, hows and whats. Why did they vote against their own best interests? What did the union do wrong that it weren’t able to convince the people to vote yes? How can we change our approach to convince people this is for them, their families and their retirements.
We’re in a pandemic and we don’t know how long we will be stuck in this mode, and while a lot of workers lost their jobs or were downsized, corporations thrived. The economy is set to experience a 7 to 8 percent growth—how is that possible? Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, grew by $75 milion in 2020 and his most recent net worth was listed as $193 billion--he's the second wealthest person in the world. It was reported that at least 4,000 of his warehouse workers are on foodstamps. There are 56 new billionaires created during the pandemic.
Drug companies raised prices, along with companies like Coca-cola, Procter&Gamble and Kimberly Clarke to name just a few.
If we don’t respond to the Amazon failure and continue to fight with all we have unions will just fade away. Understand, Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon, not because of the threat of unions but because of it. He can better fight against the efforts in his new position as executive chairman of Amazon. This fight will be the tipping point for union versus nonunion. It is a must win for our workers who need a living wage, healthcare, pensions, and a safe place to work.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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